REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — Testimony in Scott Peterson's trial focused Monday on a mentally unstable woman who became "infatuated" with the fertilizer salesman after his wife went missing and later burglarized his house.

In his third day under cross-examination by Peterson's lawyer, Modesto Police Detective Allen Brocchini recounted his contact with Kimberly McGregor, a neighbor who admitted breaking into the couple's home on Jan. 19, 2003, about a month after the Laci Peterson disappeared.

Brocchini said McGregor stole eight garments apparently belonging to Scott Peterson, as well as his wife's Social Security card and a camcorder.

She also told investigators that during the midnight break-in she poured herself a Jack Daniels and Coke, unwrapped two presents under the Christmas tree, and may have rested in the Petersons' bed.

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The detective testified that McGregor told him she was bipolar and off her medication when she committed the crime. McGregor did not know Peterson before his wife vanished and she befriended him at the volunteer search center.

Brocchini said he told Peterson he believed McGregor was "infatuated" with him, prompting the fertilizer salesman to reply sarcastically, "That's great."

At the time, Peterson's affair with masseuse Amber Frey had just been exposed and his wife's family and police were suspicious of him.

Brocchini said Peterson declined to prosecute McGregor, saying it was not worth the bother.

Emphasizing McGregor's strange behavior, defense lawyer Mark Geragos implied that Modesto police had overlooked other individuals' bizarre conduct and lies in a rush to pin the disappearance on Peterson, who, the lawyer said, lied only about his infidelity.

Referencing an hour-long videotaped interview Peterson gave Brocchini the night he reported his wife missing, Geragos asked, "Was he lying about anything in that interview?"

"No," Brocchini admitted.

The detective conceded that McGregor only gradually confessed the true story of the burglary, telling half-truths in interviews until confronted with other evidence, including the camcorder, which was recovered in a back alley inside a 55-gallon drum filled with grease.

He also acknowledged that his interest in McGregor as a suspect was piqued enough that he asked her to account for her whereabouts on Dec. 23 and Dec. 24, 2002 — the period Laci Peterson vanished.

Furthermore, he testified, McGregor's alibi was problematic. A friend she said she ran into at a day spa on Christmas Eve later told police the encounter actually occurred on Dec. 23.

Her alibi for the evening of Dec. 23 was dinner with an ex-boyfriend. Geragos noted that the boyfriend had "two Hawaiian roommates," and implied the men may be related to reports of a "Pacific Islander" who attempted to kidnap a teenager in a neighboring town a few days before.

Ultimately, however, the detective said, he determined McGregor had nothing to do with the crime.

"In my mind, she is eliminated," he said, swiveling in the witness chair toward the jury for emphasis. "She's been investigated and I don't think she was involved."

Geragos' gentle questioning of Brocchini was markedly different in tenor than Thursday, when the detective last appeared before the jury. Then, the two clashed in several contentious exchanges as Brocchini admitted several mistakes in his reports, including purposefully excluding a witness statement beneficial to the defense.

With Geragos using the detective's reports to point away from his client and toward other suspects, the lawyer's questions were straight-forward instead of accusatory and Brocchini was not as defensive. His answers were typically, "Yes," "That's right," or "Correct."

As Peterson scrawled notes to him at the defense table, Geragos quizzed Brocchini about a range of other tips the police department received that appeared to point to other perpetrators.

The defense lawyer noted that a friend and neighbor of the Petersons, Kristen Reed, saw a blue or brown van parked across the street from the couple's home Christmas Eve morning. The van, the detective agreed, was never located or identified.

But Brocchini accused Geragos of taking the woman's statement out of context. He told jurors she mentioned it to him nine months after Laci Peterson's disappearance and said she may have been influenced by media reports about a van. She could only be sure in the end, he said, that there was a vehicle there.

Geragos briefly questioned the detective about his contact with Frey. He hinted that the massage therapist had come forward to police about her affair with Peterson to get a $500,000 reward, noting that the money was offered the day before she phoned a police tip line.

The detective also confirmed that Frey told him Peterson was not the first man to lie about being a widow. She told Brocchini that a male friend told her that his wife died of cancer. That December, the same month Peterson falsely told her he had "lost" his wife, she ran into the friend's wife at a car wash.

Before testimony began, Judge Alfred Delucchi strongly reprimanded the Modesto Police Department for breaking the gag order that governs the case. A spokesman for the department defended Brocchini's exclusion of the witness statement in an interview with the Associated Press.

The judge called a representative of the department, Captain Joe Aja, into the well of the court and dressed him down.

"I'm telling you this has to stop," he told Aja.

He also pointedly told the gallery that the gag rule covered "parents." Both the parents of the defendant and the victim have occasionally commented on the trial as they have entered and left court.

Brocchini continues on the stand Tuesday.

Peterson, 31, faces the death penalty if convicted of killing his wife and unborn son. The trial entered its second month Monday. It is expected to last about six months.